In two current exhibitions of paintings, short videos, and seven-inch sound-effects records from the mid-‘70s to the mid-‘80s, the work of Jack Goldstein (1945–2003) is just as conceptually acute as it is easy on the eyes. At Metro Pictures, Goldstein's gorgeous yet dissonant paintings seem to be based on photographs capturing nature at its most awe-inspiring (lightning flashes, volcanic eruptions). But does nature really exist in such luscious Technicolor? Uptown at Mitchell-Innes & Nash are several more paintings, nine handsome 7-inch discs, and an exceptional loop of his beautiful, spare videos. Obvious precursors to the work of contemporary artists like T.J. Wilcox, Goldstein's videos reveal the artist steeped in the same concerns that would later inform his paintings. White Dove, 1975, shows the futile attempt of a pair of hands to clasp a perched dove, which flutters away before it can be captured. The hypnotizing The Jump, 1978, presents rotoscoped stock footage of divers. The glitzy effect transforms the athletes into pixilated jewels, their lithe bodies spinning and twisting from highboards before disappearing with a splash into a black void. Goldstein's exceptional body of work elucidates a state in which beauty is experienced second-hand, inside the pages of magazines and television screens, and locates something more complicated than spiritual bankruptcy therein.

—Nick Stillman artforum

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first jessica alba, now this?

JETER AND WANG
TAME THE TIGERS

during a promo on tcm, someone related the story of steve mcqueen spending hours getting in and out of cars in order to figure out what would look "the coolest." gotta appreciate that kind of commitment to craft.

junior bonner / this is always on my film recommend list

phil spector, man or bush?

Here’s a classic coincidence: we were at aKa talking about their Monday film nights, and whether a better projection screen could be devised. I was speculating about the possibility of some sort of paint, and a couple of days later there was an article in the NY Post about exactly that. (Ugh, the Post now requires registration; bad move.) Anyway, the stuff is called Screen Goo and looks to be the thing if you’re serious about turning a wall into a cinematic vista.

This blog will document
the in-and-outs and ups-
and-downs of the
renovation of our 1870's
brownstone in Clinton Hill.

the problem of being michael moore

bowling for columbine issues

german super 8 cover art

Vinyl Video, an artistic venture by a collective of European artists, who encode black and white video data into the grooves of vinyl records, and play them back through a custom-built set-top box.

via kens wfmu blog

The Bush Administration's aggressive response to a Newsweek story alleging that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed the Koran down the toilet in front of Islamic detainees displays the height of hypocrisy. After Newsweek clumsily issued an apology, followed by a retraction, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called on the magazine to "help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region," by explaining "what happened and why they got it wrong." Maybe the Bush Administration should do the same, by opening up its secret facilities for inspection to the Red Cross and other third-party observers. We are printing below a letter from reader Calgacus--a pseudonym for a researcher in the national security field for the past twenty years--that shows how the desecration of the Koran became standard US interrogation practice.

i was wondering about this. payback time baby!

Google Maps satellite image of a... um... well... weather balloon? Swamp gas? Atmospheric anomaly? (via robotwisdom)

"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie."

Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four million a day.

blah blah blog

This is a web version of Aspen, a multimedia magazine of the arts published by Phyllis Johnson from 1965 to 1971. Each issue came in a customized box filled with booklets, phonograph recordings, posters, postcards — one issue even included a spool of Super-8 movie film. It's all here.

Here is the smoking gun:


"C [Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.


It is not surprising on the face of it that Bush had decided on the Iraq war by summer of 2002. It it is notable that Dearlove noticed a change in views on the subject from earlier visits. By summer of 2002, the Afghanistan war had wound down and al-Qaeda was on the run, so Bush no longer felt vulnerable and was ready to go forward with his long-cherished project of an Iraq War. What is notable is that all this was not what Bush was telling us.

[....]

Goldsmith's hands trembled as he reached out for the chainsaw rig. He saw himself and the others sitting in the Hague, one day, facing the same judges that Milosevic harangued. Charged. But it is a long way from Crawford to the Hague. The man from Connecticut with the cowboy boots and the fake twang would get away with it. They would all get away with it. But people would know they had lied.

-juan cole

FANTASIAS


The structural necessity of multiple inconsistent fantasies laid out
in a continuous SOUND RECITAL for and within the closing day of
"I Is Had Gone" a show of The Painting of the Real

with
Amy Granat (violin) & Jutta Koether (keys)
John Moros (sampler) & Chuck Nanney (kaoss pad)

Saturday, May 7
2pm -4.30 pm

at
Thomas Erben Gallery
516 W. 20th St.
NY NY 10011
tel: 212-645-8701

could you hold this leash for a sec. thanks. click. (?!)

According to my calendar, someone's got a birthday today!

Spring Is Now!

May Day, 2005
Prospect Park

Double-crested Cormorant
Great Egret
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Canada Goose
Mute Swan
Mallard
Osprey (5pm flyover.)
Red-tailed Hawk
Solitary Sandpiper (Upper Pool.)
Spotted Sandpiper (A few.)
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Belted Kingfisher
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Ravine.)
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Kingbird (Nethermead, S of Arches.)
Blue-headed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Fish Crow
Tree Swallow
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Bank Swallow (Lake.)
Barn Swallow
Tufted Titmouse
House Wren (Sullivan Hill.)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Veery (Ambergill.)
Gray-cheeked Thrush (1 certain; 1 red-tinged bird maybe Bicknell's... Nelly's Lawn/Vale; south of Rose Garden.)
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush (Peninsula.)
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Blue-winged Warbler (Seen on Quaker Hill; a few heard around.)
Northern Parula (Several.)
Yellow Warbler (Good numbers throughout.)
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler (Lookout Hill.)
Blackburnian Warbler (Lookout Hill.)
Pine Warbler (Bright male, Breeze Hill.)
Prairie Warbler
Palm Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart (A few.)
Prothonotary Warbler (1st spring male, Ravine, moving down the stream from the waterfall.)
Ovenbird (Several.)
Northern Waterthrush
Louisiana Waterthrush (1 at waterside south of Breeze Hill.)
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler (Ravine, singing along the stream.)
Eastern Towhee (Several.)
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Several moving around Lookout Hill.)
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Baltimore Oriole (Several.)
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow

Bird News, Good and Bad

The confirmation of Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas is pretty amazing. I remember the “probably extinct” designation from childhood field guides, and dutifully skeptical ornithologists have been discounting supposed sightings for decades. Most of those probably were phantoms, and now it turns out that much of the searching was in the wrong place, but it’s still hard to believe that such a large bird could go undetected for 60 years. Of course if you’ve ever tried to find a purportedly “conspicuous” bird, even in a relatively small area like Central Park, you’d know how inconspicuous they can be when they want. The reappearance of the Ivory-billed is an index of the success of conservation and consciousness-change over the past century, as the once vast bottomland forests of the south recover from the wholesale logging of old.

If the Ivory-billed is a tragedy in reverse, our local Red-tailed Hawk saga has taken a turn for the worse, though their prospects are probably still better than the woodpeckers’. It now seems clear that the 5th Ave. nest has failed, as the female has been sitting on it for over 45 days with no sign of hatchlings. This is sad, but not totally unexpected. There were failures in 1993 and 94, both years when the nest was newly constructed. It’s probable that a second year’s accumulation of twigs is necessary to properly cushion the eggs in this location, and it’s likely that the birds will try again next year, with a better chance for success.

random starlet - martha o'driscoll